


Bring Me Home

by greatveiledbear



Category: Phineas and Ferb
Genre: Angst, Deaf Character, Human AU, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Post OWCA Files, Torture, finals what finals, man I tag stuff in a weird order
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-02-15 02:44:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13021590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greatveiledbear/pseuds/greatveiledbear
Summary: It’s not that Miggs is hurt when Peter doesn’t show up for three days in a row. It's just that it's rude to abandon your nemesis like that. That's definitely the only reason Miggs follows Peter across the country for an explanation, nothing more.And it's not like he's worried when he realizes something else is wrong. But when your best friend is in trouble, even if he's your nemesis, you help him. It's just what you do.





	1. Chapter 1

It’s not that Miggs is hurt when Peter doesn’t show up for three days in a row. 

It’s not that Miggs is waiting or anything. It’s definitely not that he misses Peter. Or that Peter’s visits are the best part of his day and he shouldn’t be nearly so happy about his plans being destroyed every time it happens. 

It’s just that it’s _rude_. It’s very rude to disappear on your nemesis like this, with no note or OWCA gift basket or text message or email or anything. Really, there are myriad methods of communication open to Peter, even without speech, and he hasn’t used any of them to tell Miggs where he’s been for the last three days. Not a word about why there are three Inators lined up against the wall, waiting to be destroyed because Miggs didn’t have the heart to use them without his opposition around. 

Miggs sighs and throws his screwdriver across the lab. He gets up, abandoning the fourth un-destroyed inator, and paces to the nearest window so he can stare and brood. 

The thing that really hurts is that OWCA hasn’t sent anyone to cover for Peter. That’s how low of a priority Miggs is to them. Not that he expected anything different, but it stings. Maybe because recently he’s felt like at least a little bit of a priority to Peter. He’s let himself get attached, let himself get used to feeling like he matters to someone. He should’ve known he doesn’t matter and never will. 

He’s been trying so hard ever since Doofenshmirtz told him to talk more. He _has_ been talking more, and Peter’s been responding. It was _working_. The two had even started hanging out outside of thwarting when they realized they liked the same coffee shop and made it a Saturday morning ritual. 

Miggs’ stomach twists. Tomorrow is Saturday. If Peter doesn’t show up, well… then he’ll know it’s really over. And he’ll go back to being alone.

 

***

Peter doesn’t show up.

Miggs sits in the coffee shop, his stomach in knots and his latte growing cold between his palms. He’s wearing his best mask and he even put on a little cologne this morning for luck. Ha. Yeah right. As if he’s ever been lucky in love.

Wait, love?

Miggs pushes that thought aside, trying to bury it. He knows he loves Peter, he’s known for months, but it’s the first time he’s let himself think it so consciously. Of course it came up now, when Peter’s abandoned him, probably for some pretty new thing with nice shiny inators and interesting backstories.

The chair scrapes loudly on the floor as Miggs shoves it back and runs out of the coffee shop, leaving his latte on the table. 

***

He can’t let this stand.

He’s been moping in his lab for two hours when he decides it. His nemesisship with Peter can’t end like this. He won’t _let_ it end like this. If Peter is going to leave him after so long, after they’ve finally started bonding, he needs to tell Miggs to his face.

Miggs pushes himself off the floor and grabs his laptop. He flips it open and goes to the OWCA website, which he hacks with swift efficiency. 

OWCA puts a tracking device in each agent’s hat, in case of emergency. Once Miggs is in the system, he pulls up Peter’s file and types the code for his tracker in to the correct portal. A map opens up and a small red dot appears over a city and starts pulsing. 

Miggs’ heart sinks. 

Danville.

Of course.

Peter _hasn’t_ left him for some pretty new thing. He’s run back to his other nemesis, the one who understands him and fulfills him better than Miggs ever can. 

He’s run back to Doofenshmirtz. 

Miggs closes the laptop and squeezes his eyes shut. His chest hurts. He’d thought they were past this, that Peter was finally happy with him. Maybe Miggs had gotten complacent and that’s why Peter left. Maybe he belongs in Danville, happily thwarting that crackpot German weirdo while Miggs’ useless inators sit and gather dust, since he doesn’t even want to use them without Peter around.

Truth be told, Miggs hasn’t wanted to use his inators for a long time. He only builds them so Peter will have a reason to visit. 

“Not like that fucking worked,” he says out loud, wiping his eyes. He’s not crying. He’s _not_. A sob chokes out of him and he presses a hand to his mouth. He won’t give in. 

He gets to his feet, grabs a crowbar, and walks to the row of unused inators. They sit there, mocking him in their wholeness, and Miggs lets out a scream before tearing into the oldest one. It’s a Building-Evaporator-Inator, and it comes apart with an awful skreeking of metal as he pops out the bolts and rends the exterior along the seams. He demolishes it completely, leaving it in tiny pieces scattered across the floor before moving on to the next one, and the next one after that. It’s only when all four inators have been stripped to their component parts that Miggs collapses to his knees, his back aching almost as badly as his heart. 

He lets himself cry for two minutes before he makes himself get up and limps back to his chair.

He sinks down in front of his laptop and rests his head on his folded arms. Everything aches, worse than any bruise Peter’s ever given him. He’s only lost inators before, meaningless contraptions that he never even wanted to work. Now he’s lost the best friend he’s ever had. 

God. His best friend--his _only_ friend--is his fucking _nemesis_. How sad is that?

Miggs sniffles and wipes his nose on his sleeve. He can’t believe it’s ending like this.

It hurts too much to let it end like this. 

“Aw, fuck,” Miggs mumbles, knowing what he has to do and how small his chance of success is. It’s humiliating, but if there’s even a chance that he can win Peter back, he has to try. He opens his laptop and books an airline ticket to Danville.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Minimal cartoon violence, some language.

The airplane is cramped and stuffy, and the kid behind Miggs keeps kicking his seat. Miggs distracts himself by thinking through the process required to create a device that makes screaming children on airplanes disappear. He’s typing down a list of parts on his phone when the plane lands in Danville. 

Danville is just as sunny and beautiful and irritating as Miggs remembers it. He hates sunny and beautiful, especially because it’s so much more appealing to good guys than rainy and gray. Maybe Peter would have stayed if Miggs lived somewhere nicer.

He takes a cab to Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated, and he feels fine until a fit of nerves overtakes him in the elevator. He gets off a floor early and paces the hall.

What the hell is he going to say to Peter? 

He considers for a moment threatening to destroy Seattle unless Peter returns, but the thought twists his stomach. He doesn’t want to blackmail his nemesis. He’s just barely desperate enough to beg, but stooping to that kind of manipulation is pretty low.

He’s going to have to take Doofenshmirtz’s advice again. _Communication is the key, if you just open up you’ll see._ He hates listening to Doofenshmirtz, but Peter’s here, so the guy must be doing something right. 

Miggs takes a deep breath and composes his words in his head.

_I miss you and I need you and you’re the best part of my day and I know it’s selfish but please, please come back to me. Just tell me what I did wrong and I’ll fix it, I’ll make it up to you however I can._

It’s sappy and awful, and it’s going to hurt to say and he hates it. But it’s the truth. 

Miggs gets back into the elevator and rides up to the proper floor. He straightens his coat and adjusts his mask before taking a travel-sized Blastinator out of his pocket and firing it at the door. 

The door flies off its hinges and Miggs strides into Doofenshmirtz’s lair. 

There’s a yelp and a crash. Doofenshmirtz comes scurrying across the room, his black shirt dripping with what looks like coffee. He’s not wearing his customary lab coat.

“Perry the Platypus, I thought we agreed that you were going to use the key!” he snaps, and then he sees Miggs and stops. He frowns and squints at Miggs before his eyes widen and he says, “Professor _Mystery?_ "

Miggs doesn’t bother to confirm it. “Where is he?”

“Where is who?”

As if Doofenshmirtz doesn’t know exactly who he’s talking about. The fact that he actually looks confused sends a rush of anger through Miggs. Doofenshmirtz doesn’t even know how lucky he is to have Peter, and now he’s taking him for granted.

Miggs pulls out his Taser-inator, which he packed precisely for this reason, and Doofenshmirtz throws up his hands. “Wait, wait! I really don’t know who you’re talking about!”

“Peter the Panda, asshole!” Miggs snarls. He presses his thumb to the button of the Taser-inator, charging it up.

“Don’t zap me with that!” yelps Doofenshmirtz, covering his face. “I have no idea where he is!”

So Peter didn't give Doofenshmirtz a home address when he moved. “When will he be here?” asks Miggs.

“What do you mean, _when will he be here?_ Is he coming here?” Doofenshmirtz glances around the room, as though Peter might be hiding in the corner.

Miggs is about to taze him when something slams into him from behind, knocking him to the ground and pinning him. The Taser-inator is jerked out of his hand and skitters across the floor, and whoever’s just tackled him yanks Miggs’ hands behind him and pins them. Miggs cries out as the motion wrenches his shoulder. He catches a flash of teal out of the corner of his eye.

“Perry the Platypus, thank you for saving me from this lunatic!” cries Doofenshmirtz. “He wants to know where Peter the Panda is, can you believe that? Why’s he asking _me_?”

The weight on top of Miggs shifts. He can feel a knee pressed to the small of his back. 

“Well, of _course_ I don’t know where he is!” snaps Doofenshmirtz from somewhere above. “I haven’t even seen him since we last saw Professor Mystery! Remember that, when he kidnapped me? Peter hasn’t been back since then!”

Miggs raises his head enough to see Doofenshmirtz’s shoes. He lets out a snort. “A likely story.” 

“No, it’s true!” Doofenshmirtz kneels, crouching to look Miggs in the eye. “I swear, I haven’t seen him since then! Why would he even come around here? I’m not evil anymore!”

This is news to Miggs. “What?”

The weight on his back eases and Perry the Platypus yanks Miggs to his feet. The agent shoves him across the room and handcuffs him to a nearby chair. 

“Is this really necessary?” grumbles Miggs, yanking at the handcuffs. It’s only the one wrist, and he can still move, but dragging the chair behind him will be irritating.

Perry glares at him, his brown eyes narrow below the brim of his fedora. His teal suit is immaculate as ever; Miggs can’t remember a single time he’s seen the agent ruffled. ‘You just tried to taze Heinz,’ Perry signs with quick, sharp movements. ‘You tell me.’

Miggs scowls at him before glancing back to Doofenshmirtz. “What do you mean, you’re not evil anymore?” 

“It’s true!” Doofenshmirtz pulls a fedora much like Perry’s seemingly out of nowhere and slaps it on his head. “I cleaned up and joined OWCA at the end of last summer! Look, I’ve got a hat and everything!” 

Miggs stares at him, trying to absorb this information. “Then why is Peter coming to Danville to see you?” 

“He’s not! That’s what I’ve been saying!” Doofenshmirtz lets out and exaggerated sigh and puts his hands on his hips. “Look, I don’t know if Peter the Panda’s in Danville, but he sure hasn’t showed up _here_.” 

Miggs shakes his head. Doofenshmirtz has to be lying. Peter is here, and _Doofenshmirtz_ is here, so obviously--

“But I tracked his hat,” he says aloud, trying to parse it out. “It’s in Danville. So _he’s_ in Danville. And why else would he be here but you?”

‘Maybe he got assigned a mission?’ signs Perry.

“But _I’m_ his mission!” cries Miggs, more petulantly than he means to. Perry gives a noncommittal shrug. 

“Hold on,” says Doofenshmirtz. “Did the tracker thing give you a street name or anything? Something more specific than the city?”

Miggs shakes his head. “I didn’t need it to. Once the city popped up I knew he’d be here. Or--” He swallows, worry starting to bubble in his gut. “Or I thought I did.” 

Doofenshmirtz pulls a laptop from underneath the nearest table, flips it open, and starts typing. He scowls at it. “Perry the Platypus, would you mind logging in for me? I don’t have clearance for this.”

To Miggs’ surprise, Perry complies without protest. OWCA loyalty must outweigh whatever jealousy he has for Peter and Doofenshmirtz’s relationship. Or he’s secure enough that he doesn’t need to be jealous anymore. 

Miggs grabs the arm of the chair he’s handcuffed to and drags it over so he can see the screen as Perry brings up the OWCA tracker and zooms in. 

“Found him!” says Doofenshmirtz happily a moment later. “Looks like he’s…” He frowns. “... hanging out behind Abzir’s Car Parts, for some reason. Huh. Well, at least he doesn’t seem to be driving anywhere. If you hurry you can probably catch him!” 

Miggs doesn’t need to be told twice. The instant Perry unlocks his handcuffs, he’s running out the door, down the stairs, and into the garage. He hotwires a car (he’s pretty sure it’s Doofenshmirtz’s, going by the “I Heart Evil” bumper sticker that someone’s tried to scribble over in marker), plugs Abzir’s Car Parts into his phone, and runs three red lights getting there. It’s in a rundown, industrial part of town, the kind of place Miggs could see a down-on-their-luck villain hanging out while they scoped out the area. He races around the store to the back and skids to a stop.

He’s in a back alley paved in faded asphalt, a dumpster to one side and a metal fence holding back a junkyard to the other.

No Peter. But there are signs of a struggle: scuffed dirt, a footprint, a fresh dent in the side of the dumpster.

 _Damn_ it. 

Miggs sighs and turns to leave. Maybe he can find a hotel room and at least have some modicum of comfort while he hacks the OWCA hat tracker again.

There’s a flash of brown out of the corner of his eye.

Miggs frown and glances towards it. He’s in a dusty area, mostly dull olive greens and beiges and grays, so it really shouldn’t stand out to him, but he knows that shade of brown. That’s OWCA brown. Peter’s hat brown. 

There’s a bit of crushed fabric sticking out from under the dumpster.

Miggs picks it up and rubs it between his fingers.

It’s felt. Ripped on one side, smooth and curved on the other.

Like a hat brim.

Worry starts to sizzle through him again, and Miggs tucks the felt into his pocket before he hoists himself into the dumpster. He only has to root for a few seconds before he finds what he doesn’t want to see, tossing a couple of boxes onto the ground and sending a broken microwave crashing to the asphalt as he pulls it out.

His stomach lurches.

It’s a crushed brown fedora. A good chunk of the brim is missing, and there are a few wires poking out of the black band. Miggs taps it and a screwdriver falls out of the hidden compartment in the crown.

“Fuck,” Miggs whispers as the worry turns to full blown panic. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.”

Peter would never willingly abandon his hat.

So where the hell is Peter?


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Captured and chained, Peter is beginning to crumble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **CW torture, pretty much the whole chapter.** See end notes for a non-graphic summary.

Peter aches. His wrists ache from the chains wrapped around them. His body aches from hanging from the ceiling for the last—nineteen? Twenty?—who knows how many hours, the suspension stretching open the injuries on his back and ribs. His eyes ache from the bright lights in the square white room, which change ever so slightly every few minutes so that he can’t get used to them. His ears ache from leaving his hearing aids in much, much too long. And his neck aches from keeping his head tipped back to avoid the devil’s fork clasped around his throat. 

He swallows, his Adam’s apple rubbing the metal against his skin. The devil’s fork is a metal collar with something like a sharp, double-ended tuning fork welded to the front. One end pokes into Peter’s collarbone, the other threatens to spear him under the chin if he lets his head fall. 

He blinks, trying to stop himself from dozing off. He can feel blood oozing down his neck from the last time. 

He’s lost track of how long he’s been here. It’s not the first time he’s been captured, but it is the longest he’s gone before being rescued. 

He misses Miggs. Miggs was the one who kidnapped Peter last time, holding him in a surprisingly comfortable dungeon for two days before Peter escaped. Miggs had been trying to clone him, and it might have worked if Peter hadn’t thwarted it. But it had been a shockingly enjoyable experience, and Peter had come away from it feeling closer to his nemesis than ever. There’s something easy and comfortable about Miggs, a familiarity to his grumpiness that makes it easy to be around him. Sometimes, even when he has to, Peter doesn’t want to leave. 

He sets those thoughts aside for later. He closes his eyes, which does little for his pounding headache, and wonders how much more he can take. 

His captors want details about OWCA. Ways into the OWCA database, weaknesses, secret identities—anything they can get out of Peter, they’ll take. They’ve been trying to get him to talk for at least three days, if his estimate of the time he’s been here is right, in a slow escalation of torture. 

The first day, they hung him up and beat him. The second day they whipped him. There’s an open wound on his chest, just beginning to heal, and his back is striped with bruises and cuts that will turn into scars. He gritted his teeth and took it. 

The third day they burned him. He didn’t scream until the branding iron came out. 

Now it’s sleep deprivation. They let him sleep the first two days, and they’ve taken him down a few times and given him just enough water and food to keep him from passing out, but his throat is like sandpaper and his eyelids hurt and he doesn’t know how much longer he can do this. 

The problem is that he knows everything they want. He knows he could tell them. He could snap his fingers—literally snap his fingers, that’s what they told him to do once he’s ready to talk—and they’ll let him down, give him water, let him rest. They’d still kill him once they were done, sure, but he’d at least have a chance to escape. 

But he can’t give away OWCA’s secrets. Not even one. He can’t. 

He stiffens as he hears the hydraulic door slide open and footsteps ring across the room. 

“How you doing, Petey-boy?” says a cheerful voice, and Peter grits his teeth. Dennis. Ex-OWCA agent, codename The Rabbit, defected six years ago for unknown reasons. Always had a creepy thing for knives. He’s the one who’s been doing most of the torture. 

Dennis crosses behind Peter and Peter flinches as hands touch his shoulders. They fumble at something on his neck, and then there’s a _clank_ as Dennis gently takes off the devil’s fork. Peter gratefully lets his head fall forward. 

He jerks as cold water hits him in the face, his chains rattling. 

Dennis laughs. “Aw, you thought we were done? That’s adorable.” He throws another bucket of water on Peter’s back, but Peter manages not to flinch this time, keeping his breathing even. 

He hears a buzz and opens his eyes just in time to see the blur of movement as Dennis sticks something like a cattle prod into his ribs. 

The shock _hurts_ like a full-body rubber band snap, if the rubber band were made of lava. Peter can’t help the strangled cry that escapes his throat as he tries to twist away from it. The welts on his back are on fire; everywhere the water touched him burns. 

Dennis pulls the cattle prod away and Peter goes limp, trying to get his breath back. His throat is raw. 

“This is a picana,” says Dennis, running his hand over the stick. “It’s an old torture device I picked up a couple years ago. You’re supposed to have two people to operate it, but I made some adjustments. I don’t like sharing. Speaking of sharing, you got anything _you_ want to share?”

Peter shakes his head. 

The next shock is worse, somehow, applied right to one of the welts. Peter screams and thrashes, mind blank of everything but the pain. When it stops he sucks in air, his chest heaving as he struggles 

“... have to keep going on like this,” Dennis is saying when Peter can hear again. “You can make it stop.” He boops Peter’s nose with the picana. “Just say the word, Pete.”

Peter can’t get enough saliva in his mouth to spit in Dennis’s face, so he settles for a glare. 

“Suit yourself,” says Dennis, and digs the picana into the open wound on Peter’s chest. 

The world explodes into pain and noise. 

***

Peter is nauseous and shaking by the time Dennis is done with him. He can’t help whimpering when Dennis clasps the devil’s fork back around his neck, which makes Dennis laugh.

“Oh, Petey, you thought you got to _sleep_?” He boops Peter’s nose again. “Good one.” He turns and walks away, retreating into a blur before Peter’s light-abused eyes. “It’s too bad you didn’t tell us what we want to know. Next time I’m going to have to start taking off skin.”

Peter tries to glare at him. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots someone standing by the door. The shape is blurry and fuzzy, but he knows it’s his other captor. All he knows is that she’s a woman, and Dennis follows her orders—and her voice sounds so familiar. He wishes he could place it. If he could just figure out who she is, maybe he could do something. 

He closes his eyes and grits his teeth against the despair rising in his chest. He has to find a way out of this. He _has_ to. Or—

Unbidden, a thought pops into his mind. _I have to make it out of here or I’ll never see Miggs again._

Peter lets out a sob that shakes his whole body. He hasn’t cried in years. He hates how broken he sounds, he hates everything about this, the hot tears rolling down his cheeks a sharp contrast to the water cooling on his sore skin. He hates that he’s so tired, so _desperate _. He’s out of control. He’s going to die here, probably after spilling all of OWCA’s secrets to Dennis of all people, and he’s never going to see Miggs or Perry or even goddamn Doofenshmirtz again, and it’s all his fault for slipping up and letting himself be captured.__

“ _Oh_ ,” says his unknown captor, her delighted voice drifting across the room. “Oh, he’s _crying_. Very good, Dennis. I think we’re getting close.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter summary: Peter's been captured for several days by two people who want him to give them all the secrets of OWCA and are willing to get them through any means. One of the people is Dennis the rogue agent, the other is a woman who seems vaguely familiar. Peter's beginning to be afraid that if he doesn't get out soon, he'll die here and he'll never see Miggs again.

**Author's Note:**

> Will update soon, I hope. Thanks for reading! <3
> 
> Comment and I'll love you forever <3


End file.
